Does Twitter’s $8-per-month premium plan come with a license to spread hate speech?
According to a new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), racist and abusive tweets from users with the blue check mark were not taken down by Twitter for several days after being flagged as offensive.
The CCDH report flagged 100 posts by Twitter Blue users that contained neo-Nazi, racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic or conspiracy content. Four days after the tweets were flagged by the group, 99 of the tweets were still online, and none of the accounts had been removed, it said. The tweets, which were collected between April 16 and May 4 and flagged through Twitter’s “report tweet” feature, were all from Twitter Blue accounts. That means they receive additional prominence and distribution on the service of the platform’s more than 200 million users.
“The Twitter blue tick used to be a sign of authority and authenticity, but it is now inextricably linked to the promotion of hate and conspiracism,” said Imran Ahmed, the CEO of CCDH, in the report.
Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.
The CCDH report is the latest indication that policing of hate speech on Twitter has suffered since the company was acquired by Elon Musk last year. Musk, who describes himself as a “free-speech absolutist,” has reinstated banned Twitter users, including former President Donald Trump.
But Musk has maintained that certain types of speech are not permitted on Twitter. The tweets flagged by the CCDH clearly violate Twitter’s policy on hate speech, which defines hateful conduct as anything “directly attack(ing) other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”
The CCDH experiment focused only on blue-check accounts, and the group did not flag offensive tweets from standard nonpaying accounts. So it’s unclear whether Twitter’s sluggish response to violations by paying users is different from its actions toward other users who post problematic content.
Twitter’s blue check mark, which is given to users who pay $8 per month, confers certain benefits, including priority distribution of tweets on the social network. A tweet from Elon Musk on April 25 confirmed the special treatment of these users, saying that “verified accounts are now prioritized.” The users get prioritized ranking in conversations and search.
The company’s hateful conduct policy also faced controversy recently after a line from the policy was removed. The line prevented “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.”